Local Astronomy

This morning I started reading a Lauren Bacall's autobiography. In the first chapter, she describes meeting Bette Davis for the first time when she was a young teen. She was completely star-struck, but Miss Davis was as gracious as she could be, even sending young Miss Bacall a handwritten letter thanking her for her visit.

Where I work, I have occasion to meet celebrities from time to time. Although I am not star-struck, there are a few whose company I really enjoyed: Jane Seymore, Natalie Cole (and her delightful personal assistant,) and Martin Landau, in particular. But Miss Bacall's book got me to thinking about James Marsden.

On a quiet night just after Christmas, Amanda, one of the waitresses, came out and told me that James Marsden was in the bar. When I could, I wandered in, and sure enough, there he was. A smaller person than I had imagined (I found out later that his prince costume included a lot of padding), and I was struck by how ordinary (though extremely handsome) he looked. Just a guy hangin' with his buds.

Later I came in to return some glasses that had been left outside. I stood listening to something the bartender was saying, and when I turned around to go, Mr. Marsden was standing right behind me. I smiled and nodded hello in a profesional manner. He stuck out out his hand and said, "Hi, I'm James." Just a regular guy. So cool.
"Hi, James. I'm Ron. What brings you to town?"
"I'm actually from here. I'm visiting family over the holidays. I didn't know about this place. My friends brought me to see it." (Later I wished that I had offered him the tour.)
I responded with some kind of acknowledgement, and then told him a story having to do with one of his movies that had been amusing my family for a couple of weeks. He laughed, but I couldn't tell how amusing he actually found it.

After he had gone, I looked up his bio online. His page on Wikipedia made it sound like one day he just packed up and left for Hollywood and became an immediate success, though I know that's probably not true. I started thinking about all the things I would have liked to have asked him, all of which can be summed up in one broad question: "How did you get where you are today?" Tom Cruise is eight days older than me, and I'd like to ask him the same question.

Looking back on my life, I'm realizing more and more that the life I'm living now is the result of choices I made when I was in my teens and twenties. Same for them. And although one is from the same place I'm from, and the other is the same age, our lives are astronomically different. So how much of that difference, and the decicions they made, resulted from planning, persistence, knowledge, discovery, or pure dumb luck? Many of the choices I made in life were a result of my own self image. Is it the same for them? Has it ever held them back?

Of course I'm just using them as examples. I actually wonder the same things about everyone I meet. It's probably the reason I enjoy biography so much. I've often said that the only difference between any one person and any other person in the world is their life experience. One's nationality, religion, race, occupation, celebrity or obscurity, etc. are just components of that experience, so evaluating another person based on those things is a pretty worthless exercise. Everyone is a fascinating person if you can find the time to hear them. We're all stars waiting to be discovered.